The land at West Edge Farm has been successfully promoted by Wallace for 220 homes, via a planning application and appeal to the Directorate for Planning and Environmental Appeals. The site was won at appeal due principally to the City of Edinburgh Council not maintaining a five-year effective housing land supply. The site has been marketed to a number of home builders by Savills on the instruction of Wallace and the land owners.

Proposal & Promotion

Wallace have been promoting it with our appointed consultant team through the review of the City of Edinburgh Local Development Plan. The plan has now reached the latter stages of the review process and is now at examination. Through the review process, the council did not identify our land as a preferred site to come forward for development within the emerging plan. It has been widely reported through the review process and tested by the housing industry that the council have not identified sufficient housing sites to meet the requirements set out within SESplan. In brief, it is recognised through a number of appeals that the council has a significant shortfall in their housing land supply of over 6,500 homes.

As part of the overall planning strategy developed for the site by Wallace, we considered that there was a window of opportunity for success through an application for planning permission without local development plan support.

It was understood that this was unlikely to get the support of the council and would be refused but could be considered as a sustainable and suitable site by the appeal reporter. In order to give the site the best possible case via the application and at appeal, a comprehensive review of the site was undertaken by the consultant team employed by Wallace. Some of the key issues that were scrutinised included land supply, landscape and visual impact, transportation, education and any required mitigation measures. We also held a number of community consultation events to understand local concerns and infrastructure issues that would need to be addressed as part of the development.

Through this process we were able to demonstrate that the site was in a sustainable location, had no adverse effect on the wider Edinburgh Greenbelt and any infrastructure constraints could be mitigated.

Sale Process

Wallace developed an overall sales strategy to sell the site,
in consultation with the land owner, it was agreed to sell the site and we
jointly appointed Savills to openly market the site to a number of home
builders. Only 3 years from Wallace
securing a promotion agreement with the land owner the site is now being developed
by Persimmon & Miller homes.